"It seems, moreover, highly probable that the power inherent in the human living body, of restoring itself under accidents or wounds, is strongest in those who use most a vegetable regimen. "Contagions act with greater virulence upon bodies prepared by a full diet of animal food. "Since fishing has declined in the isles of Ferro, and the inhabitants have lived chiefly on vegetables, the elephantiasis has ceased among them. "Those monks who, by the rules of their institution, abstain from the flesh of animals, enjoy a longer mean term of life, as the consequence. Of this there can be no doubt. Of one hundred and fifty-two monks, taken promiscuously in all times and all sorts of climates, there lives produced a total, according to Baillot (a writer of eminence), of 11,589 years, or an average of seventy-six years and a little more than three months. "Those Bramins who abstain most scrupulously from the flesh of animals attain to the greatest longevity. "Life is prolonged, under incurable diseases, about one tenth by vegetable diet; so that a person who would otherwise die at seventy, will reach seventy-seven. In general, however, the proportion is about one sixth. "Abstaining from animal food palliates, when it does not cure, all constitutional diseases. "The use of animal food hurries on life with an unnatural and unhealthy rapidity. We arrive at puberty too soon; the passions are developed too early; in the male, they acquire an impetuosity approaching to madness; females become mothers too early, and too frequently; and, finally, the system becomes prematurely exhausted and destroyed, and we become diseased and old, when we ought to be in middle life. "It affords no trifling ground of suspicion against the use of animal food that it so obviously inclines us to corpulency. Corpulency itself is a species of disease, and a still surer harbinger of other diseases. It is so even in animals. When a sheep has become fat, the butcher knows it must be killed or it will rot and decline. It is rare indeed for the corpulent to be long-lived. They are at the same time sleepy, lethargic, and short-breathed. Even Hippocrates says, 'Those who are uncommonly fat die more quickly than the lean.' "As a general, rule, the florid are less healthy than those who have little color; an increase of color having ever been judged, by common sense, to be a sign of impending illness. Some, however, who are lean upon animal food, thrive upon vegetables, and improve in color. "All the notions of vegetable diet affording only a deficient nutriment--notions which are countenanced by the language of Cullen and other great physicians--are wholly groundless. "Man is herbivorous in his structure. "I have observed no ill consequences from the relinquishment of animal food. The apprehended danger of the change, with which men scare themselves and their neighbors, is a mere phantom of the imagination. The danger, in truth, lies wholly on the other side.